1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information handling systems and more particularly to enabling throttling of resources, including central processing units (CPUs) and peripherals, on a virtualization enabled information handling system such as a consumer electronics (CE) platform.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Consumer electronics devices continue to mature to include consumer electronics type information handling systems. Consumer electronics type information handling systems enable content migration from a media information handling system to a living room as well as enabling televisions for broadband. One example of such a consumer electronics type information handling system includes a digital media adapter (DMA) functionality using software such as the Microsoft Media Center extender technology software. Such a system provides no control over a software architecture to enable future services and provides no manufacturer differentiation.
Other issues relating to consumer electronics type information handling systems include limited adoption due to high set up costs and customer awareness. Often known solutions lack flexibility in terms of controlling software and hardware distribution. Often known solutions do not offer personalization and/or differentiation.
Attempting to address these issues via known information handling system platforms can also present challenges. For example, known information handling system platforms generally use well-defined development evolution based upon standard architectures. Also within known information handling system platforms, extensibility for added features is usually enabled using add in network interface controllers and controllers in predefined expansion slots such as PCIe slots. Other expansion may be accomplished via an embedded controller for storage and multimedia playback devices. Such platforms have often include well defined end user models for Internet access, email and office type applications as well as the inability to provide a customer with a secure environment to plug in certain desired services or applications.
It is known to provide information handling systems with virtualization functionality. With a virtualization-enabled information handling system, a hypervisor enables basic computer system partitioning (i.e., partitioning of CPU, Memory, and I/O subsystem building elements). A hypervisor provides the virtualization abstraction between underlying information handling system hardware elements and the operating system on which end-user applications execute.
A virtual infrastructure includes virtual machines, virtualized host systems and a set of core cross-host virtualization services. The capabilities of the virtual infrastructure are defined as a part of the management interface. The management interface monitors virtual machine inventory, generates alerts, provides capacity planning, provides reporting functionality, and performs configuration tracking function.
Known management interfaces (e.g., hypervisors) provide a processor (i.e., a central processing unit (CPU)) throttling function to allow a fixed number of CPU cores to be associated with particular applications (e.g., a particular virtual machine (VM)). However, in a consumer or small business environment, it would be desirable to be able to dynamically allocate IT resources (such as CPU cores or a fraction of a core) to virtual machines rather than dedicating a single CPU core to a particular VM. For example, a system that could allocate half of a CPU core to a particular virtual machine. Also for example, if a virtual machine is an Internet banking VM, it would be desirable to be able to throttle down graphics resources of the information handling system so that other virtual machines could use more of the graphics resources.
It would also be desirable to provide an information handling system with the ability to throttle not only the CPU but also other peripheral devices such as a graphics-processing unit (GPU) and the network controller unit. For example, if a Blu-ray player is executing on the hypervisor as a virtual machine and a gaming virtual machine is executing on the same hypervisor. Both of these virtual machines will compete for GPU resources. It would be desirable to enable management of the resource allocation of the GPU without compromising the intended output from both of the virtual machines.
Also for example, a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) real-time appliance may need to be serviced at a periodic interval and with guaranteed network bandwidth and quality of service (QoS) to the Internet and to network attached storage (NAS). Additionally, a digital video recorder (DVR) type device can require guaranteed network bandwidth and QoS such as when the DVR is recording on an internet protocol base resource, such as an internet protocol digital video device (IPDVD).
Accordingly, it would be desirable to enable throttling of resources, including central processing units (CPUs) and peripherals, on a virtualization enabled information handling system such as a CE type information handling system.